Upon Returning
by Flourish
Summary: The Pevensie children have fought in war, have governed a country, have played the great game of court intrigue - and now they return to England. More parts may possibly be posted, but it stands alone as it is and I have no planned schedule for more.
1. parts 1 through 4

1.

Peter always found it difficult to recall the minutes after they stumbled out of the wardrobe, blinking like moles in the light. The changes that must have occurred in those minutes, however, were obvious even long after the fact: he found himself singing in the wrong key at church, found doors suddenly heavier than they had ever been, found that he would bump his head on the great-room's high old-fashioned mantlepiece if he wasn't careful.

Then, too, there were other jarring moments unrelated to Peter's physical body. The electrified rooms, which were all on the first two floors, seemed unreasonably bright. None of the Pevensies had much taste for listening to the wireless, either: the staticky voices hurt their ears.

They were not, of course, wholly insensible to what was going on outside Professor Diggory's house. The Macready took no newspapers, but the Professor did, and Peter fished them out of the kitchen kindling box each evening.

When the bombs began falling on London in earnest, Peter did not tell his siblings. He put the newspaper back in the box where he found it and was quietly ill in the kitchen sink. The stink of burning giant-flesh had suddenly come back to him, and that was when he knew - he was becoming a child in more than appearance.

2.

Susan brought a rabbit into the house and was well over halfway done skinning it before the Macready found her.

In Narnia, the idea of hunting for food and not pleasure rarely appealed to Susan. There was always the fear, of course, that one might kill a talking animal without intending to; further, it was uncomfortable to eat venison in front of a Stag, though the Stag didn't mind. Laundry, as well, was a rather onerous job, and though Susan herself was not expected to pitch in, she felt somewhat guilty at ruining her beautiful silks and satins with blood.

Back in England, however, there was no reason to fear killing a friend, nor guilt over ruining the stiff, itchy clothing one was expected to wear. Peter had gone queer and distant in the weeks since they left the wardrobe; Lucy and Edmund were clannish, casting offended glances over their shoulders when Susan tried to break into their conferences - as if _they_ were the only ones who missed being Kings and Queens! So she searched all the museum-quiet halls of Professor Diggory's house to find a weapon, and when she found a bow that would serve, she strung it and listened to the sweet sound it made.

The next morning she left before dawn, on foot, and came back after breakfast with the rabbit. She intended to stew it, but she didn't get the chance: the Macready's voice rose, its Scotch burr thicker than ever, and routed her from the kitchen. Sent upstairs to wash, Susan realized that she _did _look like a savage, with blood like war-paint smeared on her cheeks. "Queen Susan, the Gentle," she said to herself as she washed it off - but the mantra had no visible effect, and she found herself roundly scolded for conduct unbefitting a young lady.

3.

Edmund, who had left no precious gifts in Narnia, discovered that the suits of armor in the Professor's halls were all rather poorly kept up. There was no question of cleaning them, however: they were antiquities, not to be touched by children.

Although the rain did not come back for the rest of the summer, Edmund had little interest in going out of doors. It didn't seem to satisfy the way it did once - the air was not as pure, nor the flowers' scents as sweet. Instead, he carefully observed the Macready's route, the tours she led through the house and her habits when there were no tours. He determined that she most rarely came up to the attics.

There, in the gloom, Edmund practiced his footwork. There he relearned his body's limits.

Lucy came up, too, to spar against him. It was rather un-girlish of her, but she'd always been the tomboy; in any case she was still good with a knife, though Edmund had more height on her in England than he had in Narnia.

In the attics they sometimes fell to talking in their old courtly way: Lucy allowed Edmund to practice telling tales in the Calormene style, and together they would recall their campaigns, drawing up battle plans in the dust on the floor. They found some figurines of creatures, imported from India, which the Professor gave them permission to play with. These tools in hand, Edmund spent hours and hours planning their next assault on the giants.

Just as autumn came, Edmund found two epees buried under old bolts of fabric that might have once served as curtains. For a moment he thought their blunted blades might serve - but Lucy couldn't lift one without strain. Neither could he, to admit it.

Since even the bow Susan found had been taken away, Edmund returned sullenly to footwork and critique: one of the most prized suits of armor was quite mismatched - but he secretly hoped some expert would point it out in an exceedingly crushing way, and therefore chose not to tell the Macready.

4.

Lucy expected to feel something when she saw her mother - happiness or gratitude. But it had been so long that when the tall elegant woman appeared in Professor Diggory's entrance hall, Lucy assumed she was waiting for a tour and paid her no mind.

The mistake became evident when Mother spotted Lucy, who was quietly examining one of the old tapestries on the stairs, and shouted up to her. "Darling!" A moment later Lucy was enveloped in Mother's smart tweed skirt-suit, her cloying scent and her effusive greetings. It was the first time that she had been embraced by an adult since the return from Narnia, and she had almost forgotten how small she had become. Mother's hands seemed like huge ungainly paws next to her own dainty white ones.

"It _is_ good to see you, Mother," Lucy lisped: her right front tooth was out. That set off another round of fussing: the big paws were suddenly touching her face, peeling back her upper lip as if Mother had any right to lay hands on Lucy at all, and quick as a viper Lucy slapped them away; such indignities could not be borne -

"No hitting, Lu!" Mother said, grabbing her wrists. "I thought you would have outgrown that by now; you aren't a baby, you know!"

Just then, Peter and Susan appeared at the top of the stairs. To the casual glance, they were simply two schoolchildren walking down - but Lucy saw Susan's fingers alight on Peter's wrist, watched Peter's hand settle at his hip where his sword's hilt used to rest, and knew that she was seeing the High King and High Queen of Narnia. In her mind's eye she saw them descending the dais at Cair Paravel.

"Oh my dears!" Mother cried. Forgetting, for the moment, Lucy's faux pas, she rushed up to hug her children.


	2. parts 5 through 8

5.

Peter had thought that the Blitz would have stopped them from going to school. He had expected that when Mother came she was coming to tell them that they would be staying home this year. It wasn't so. She had brought them new school clothes - the Macready had measured them for it, though they had paid her little mind - and was going to accompany them back to London to catch their trains, for it was Lucy's first year away from home.

There was little Peter could do with his mother, but she seemed to expect that. He tried to be as solemn and adult as he could around her. Once, shortly after she arrived at the Professor's big rambling house, she sent all the others up to bed and allowed Peter to stay down and drink hot chocolate as she and the Professor sipped their digestifs after dinner. "Poor Peter," she said to him, "having to be the man of the family. You've gotten so much older just in the few months I've been away."

He could not look her in the eye. He turned to the Professor, who smiled at him ironically.

When Peter was, at length, sent up to bed, the Professor slipped him a thimbleful of the brandy they'd been sipping. Peter tasted it, just enough to wet his lips, and immediately regretted having done so. It didn't taste like brandy. It tasted like responsibility. He was beginning to enjoy - fight, but enjoy - laying his burdens down.

6.

Susan found it difficult to put on the scratchy school clothes she loathed so much. Before, she had found them irritating. Now, she could only compare them to her multitude of queenly dresses: the dress she had made from that aquamarine silk she'd bought in Tashbaan; the Galmanian linen frock that she had worn, like a talisman, whenever she had to send suitors away; her split-skirted riding clothes; the leather buskins that served her for boots when the summers became too hot to bear...

She pulled the scratchy woolen stockings up over her knees. She sweltered.

There were some things that became easier to accept as time went on: her height, her lesser strength, her childish voice and nonexistent bosom (that, at least, made archery much more pleasant). There were other things that became harder.

When she and Lucy boarded the train for school, a rather nasty girl named Ellie Greaves commented on pretty Susan's ugly sister.

Tears came to her eyes. A year ago, Susan would have replied cuttingly; she would have stomped away, leaving Ellie Greaves sorrier for having crossed her. In Narnia, Susan would not have responded at all, nor felt the need to respond. But now, between and betwixt, tears came to her eyes; all she could do was rush Lucy along to nicer people, hoping that she wouldn't do anything rash.

7.

The nicest thing about having come back from Narnia, as far as Edmund was concerned, was that he knew so much more than any of the other boys in his year.

It wasn't that he wanted to _show off_, exactly, because he didn't. It was only that he had already done all the maths that they were going to do, and learned them well. Other subjects he was less strong on: the history of Cair Paravel and the Narnian-Calormene wars would hardly help him here, except for story-telling after lights out. But maths - maths was something that Edmund could do.

He spent the time that he would have otherwise been revising in a variety of ways. He was going to fence, he decided; he was not really old enough to do it seriously yet, but he saved his money and bought a child's foil, and he shadowboxed with himself in the corridors whenever the masters weren't around.

Then, too, he was going to become stronger. He sent away for a packet that promised to teach one how to build muscles, but it wasn't much use - all the exercises that it taught needed expensive equipment, and anyway they weren't intended for a ten-year-old. Instead he filled his trunk with his things and tried to pick it up. He did this every day. He was never able to entirely lift it, but he did get stronger.

Sometimes he compared himself to dear little Ram, Cor's son, only a toddler when they saw him last. Ram was determined to be a warrior, and Cor indulged him in it; Aravis was every bit as bad. They had made Ram a tiny sword and a tiny shield, blunted of course, and let him run around whacking at people's legs as much as he liked. He knew he wasn't anything compared to his da; yet little Ram kept trying, kept whacking, kept yelling tiny battle-cries, until he got bored of the exercise and went to hear a story or play with other toys.

So sometimes Edmund compared himself to Ram. It was not a comfortable comparison, but it was apt.

8.

Lucy had no time for the little girls she knew, not for months and months.

She could not quite convince herself that she was not going to go back to Narnia at any second. It seemed so astoundingly unfair that she should be stuck _here_, with the babyish girls of Arniston House all crying for their mums, instead of _there_, where she had her own room and didn't cry unless it was really important.

The girl in the bed next to her was named Janie, though (Lucy thought) she really ought to have gone by Jane, as she was old enough to be away from home now and therefore oughtn't have that kind of nickname. Janie was one of the least teary of all the girls, but one night several weeks into term she broke down and threw a fit. She was a twin, it seemed, and her twin Johnny had been sent to a boys' school, and she couldn't stand to be away from him any more, and why wouldn't he just _come here_?

Matter-of-factly, before the dorm mother could come in and scold, Lucy slapped Janie across the face. "Stop that," she said, calm and collected. "Crying won't do you any good. Just breathe deeply until you don't have to cry anymore. You'll see Johnny at the hols."

Janie stopped and breathed deeply, and after that Lucy had a little more respect around Arniston House, even though she didn't care to make any friends.

What she hadn't said to Janie, though, was more important than what she had, and she thought about it every night thereafter: "Crying won't do you any good. You've left your people, and when you come back you'll be quite different, and Johnny won't be the same, or you won't be the same. You haven't got a choice. You might as well think of it as an adventure, because you haven't got a choice."

NOTES.

Arniston House is meant to be a House within a boarding school. I am modeling both the girls' and boys' schools from Fettes, a real boarding school in Scotland, although you shouldn't assume that they actually go to Fettes (for one thing, girls didn't attend there until the 1970s...)

Events of World War II are as accurate as I can make them. The Pevensie children were part of the second major evacuations from London (June 1940) and the Blitz began 7 September, which was probably right before they would have left for school ("the bombs began falling in earnest...").

I have slightly fudged Ram's age and the events of _The Horse and his Boy_. While C.S. Lewis' Narnian timeline says that _A Horse and his Boy _takes place in the same year that the Pevensies return to England, I have decided that it actually takes place ten years earlier, that is, in 1004 (five years after the Pevensies come to Narnia). This allows time for Cor and Aravis to marry, have a child, and that child to grow up a little, while still allowing the young Cor to think of the Pevensies as adults (remember how old people seemed, even if they were only a few years older than you, when you were that age?). I have no excuse except that growing up, I always assumed that _A Horse and his Boy_ took place earlier than it does, and it's too ingrained in me to change now. Also, I really, really wanted Edmund to know Ram.


End file.
